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While taking everyone’s feelings into consideration is important, someone’s freedom of speech should never be silenced for fear of not being politically correct.

This exact thing happened four years ago at Live Oak High School.

According to Fox News, five students wore American flag shirts to school on May 05, 2010. A school administrator told the students to remove the shirts or flip them inside out. The students refused and were sent home.

But according to the Live Oak High School dress code, the students never violated any of the rules. The code says the “inappropriate dress” includes clothing that shows obscene pictures or gestures, sexually suggestive statements, swear words, illegal substances, weapons, and words or pictures depicting death, violence or gore.

So if the shirts didn’t violate any of the rules, then why did they get sent home for wearing them?

The answer is simple: political correctness.

According to David Hayes-Bautista, a UCLA professor who is writing a book on the history of Cinco de Mayo, the celebration goes largely unnoticed in Mexico and is seen as an American holiday.

“Everyone thinks it’s a Mexican holiday,” Hayes-Bautista said. “The answer is that it’s not only not a Mexican holiday, [but] it’s an American Civil War holiday going back to … the stances that Latinos took on the issues of the day.”

So if Cinco de Mayo isn’t even a Mexican holiday, then why make a big fuss about a small group of students wearing American shirts along side of the many students wearing Mexican flag shirts?

Wouldn’t it make sense that a holiday that is truly an American-Mexican celebration display both flags? After all, America is a nation of immigrants. It represents people of all races and ethnicities.

But the PC Police will never take that into account. And California is the home of the PC Police.

According to U.S. court documents on the case, the courts sided with the school on February 27, 2014.

“School officials did not violate the students’ rights to freedom of expression, due process, or equal protection,” the panel said.

But back in 1969, a similar case was decided about students wearing black armbands in protest of the Vietnam War. The case was decided that the students were allowed to wear the armbands to school. The decision created a standard for measuring if and when schools may restrict free speech. The decision is known as the Tinker Standard.

“They must reasonably forecast, based on evidence and not on an ‘undifferentiated fear or apprehension of disturbance,’ that the student expression would lead to either a substantial disruption of the school environment, or an invasion of the rights of others,” according to the standard.

But all the “evidence” was just plain fear of not being PC. If political correctness trumps freedom of speech, then America has a lot more problems to face then five students wearing American shirts on Cinco de Mayo.

 

 

 

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